Alertmanager: Silences are randomly sorted

[mpitt]

On the /#/silences endpoint, it seems like silences are in a different order every time the page is refreshed. Is it possible to have them sorted e.g. by start or expiration time?

[mxinden]

Related to #812. Would you be up for submitting a PR for this?

[mpitt]

That depends... do you think the sorting should be done in the frontend or the API?

[mxinden]

@mpitt I would vote for sorting on server side. I don't think this should be a big performance issue. @stuartnelson3 @fabxc what do you think?

[brancz]

I would say server side as well.

[stuartnelson3]

Also in favor of server side. Most folks probably have less than 2000 silences, and sorting that should be pretty quick.

I'm not sure how we should sort. We ran into the issue at soundcloud where folks had expirations set years in the future, so there was always noise at the top of the list with things that weren't expiring until 2025. Thoughts on sorting by expiration, soonest expiring first?

[brancz]

Maybe configurable via UI? :slightly_smiling_face:

[w0rm]

We have three lists of silences, that I think should have different sorting rules:

• Active — soonest expiring first (asc expiration date)
• Pending — soonest starting first (asc start date)
• Expired — soonest expired first (desc expiration date)